‘It’s the leather belt and buckle which was holding the two cement blocks together, with the dead baby inside. It should have been checked over days ago. Sometimes the unprofessionalism at the mortuary is beyond belief. Anyway, I’m satisfied I’ve done my job.’
‘Enjoy your holiday,’ Hunt said, taking the evidence bag and envelope over to DC Taylor. ‘Put this on Tennison’s desk, and then you can get off home.’
The young man nodded. ‘This Count Antonin Petrukhin...’
‘I don’t want to know,’ Hunt said. ‘I need to go home, unlike some who are fucking going to Tenerife. I’ll see you on Monday morning.’
DC Taylor went back to sifting through the documents he had sourced from the St Catherine’s House archives. He had also been to the British Library to check through old newspaper articles. But, like Detective Sergeant Hunt, he had no real idea what he was looking for.
Jane and Eddie had taken a while to work out exactly how the sanding machine worked. She hadn’t laughed so much in years because you had to retain a firm grip on the handles, otherwise it careered out of control. She had swept and washed down the floors whilst Eddie tried to control the machine. She was wearing a plastic bath hat, a scarf over her nose and mouth and a pair of yellow marigold gloves, and they were now both covered in sawdust from head to toe.
She suddenly felt a sharp pain in her right eye.
‘Oh God, my eye.’
‘Don’t rub it, let me have a look, which eye is it?’ Eddie said.
Both of her eyes were streaming, but she pressed the lid of her right eye.
‘Take your hand away, let me see.’
Eddie pulled down the bottom lid of her right eye and squinted, his face close, almost touching hers.
‘Hang on, I see, it’s just a bit of sawdust. Come into the kitchen and try not to touch it.’
She followed him in, her face scrunched up and blinking as he took a section of paper towel and made it into a little cone, then washed his hands, before running the cone under the cold tap.
‘OK, now stand right under the light and stay still.’
Jane had her face turned up, as he gently drew down the bottom lid with his left hand, then, using the cold, wet edge of the paper cone, gently removed the bits of sawdust.
He gently tilted her chin up with his hand.
‘How is it now?’
‘Oh, it’s fine now,’ Jane said, blinking.
There was a moment between them, while they were still close enough for their lips to meet, but instead he gently pulled her bath hat down a fraction and laughed.
‘I’ve never fallen for a woman in a plastic bath hat before. Now, are you ready to go back to work?’
By midnight they were only halfway through the hall. Jane decided to take a shower and presumed Eddie was getting ready to go home.
She was wrapped in a bath towel, ready to step into the shower, but when she turned the tap on there was no water. She went to the top of the stairs and called down to say that she thought there was something wrong with the boiler, or maybe the tap. Eddie quickly came upstairs to check it out. He stepped into the shower stall and turned the lever.
‘You weren’t switched to shower,’ he said, suddenly getting the full impact of the water that came gushing through the showerhead. Jane couldn’t stop laughing as Eddie stood there in his sodden clothes.
Then with a grin, instead of turning off the shower, Eddie started stripping off and grinning, too, Jane quickly dropped her towel to the floor to join him.
Chapter Eleven
Jane woke up with a start, worried she was late for work — until she realised it was a Saturday. Then she remembered what had taken place the previous night. She sat up and was astonished to smell bacon being cooked. She hurriedly dressed and headed downstairs, pausing when she spotted the clothes hung over the radiator. Eddie was wearing one of her towelling robes and turned to her, grinning. He held up the spatula as the bacon was almost ready. ‘Our clothes should be dry soon. You all right about last night?’
She went over and put her arms around his neck. ‘I’m perfectly all right about last night...’
He had two pieces of tissue stuck to his chin. ‘That razor in your bathroom is a bit blunt. Want an egg with this?’
‘No, just a bacon sandwich is fine. Are you always up this early?’
‘Yeah, I’m usually up at a quarter past five... and this morning we’ve got the skip arriving at seven. I’ll need to bung all that carpet into it when it comes.’
Jane fetched two mugs and the teapot as Eddie dished out the bacon onto buttered bread. He then crossed to the fridge and took out the tomato ketchup. Jane had never been with a man who had such an ease about him. He certainly had no inhibitions about wearing her robe.
‘The lads will be here between half past seven and eight, and my dad at around midday.’
Jane sat down at the kitchen table. ‘Do I need to get something for your lads to eat?’
Eddie sat down opposite her. ‘No, they’ll bring their own sandwiches, but just keep a steady flow of tea coming. I’d like to get all the sanding done today. The tricky part will be doing the stairs, but there’s a hand attachment for that. They’ll need to move all of the furniture out of your sitting room.’ Eddie seemed to be firmly back in work mode.
They finished breakfast and Eddie took their working clothes off the radiator whilst Jane began washing the dirty dishes. As she was drying up she suddenly remembered the envelope containing the Lanark family tree, which she had left on the telephone table. She put down the tea towel and went into the hall. The table had already been taken into the sitting room and the telephone was perched halfway up the stairs. She went in to see if the envelope was in the sitting room, but the small table was stacked on top of an easy chair.
She suddenly wondered if the reason Jason Thorpe had been so eager to get the photo album was actually because of the family tree. Then she remembered the conversation she’d had with Eddie about his father’s changing accent. That’s what was unsettling about Jason Thorpe, his tendency to switch between an Australian accent and an upper-crust English one. She felt certain that Jason had been acting out a role with her — but she still didn’t know why.
The skip arrived and Eddie began heaving the sections of old carpet into it. Jane stood at the open front door and asked him if he had found an envelope on the hall table beside the telephone. Eddie shrugged his shoulders and said he couldn’t remember. A short while later, as Jane was finishing cleaning the kitchen, he came in, holding up the envelope.
‘Is this what you were looking for?’
She beamed. ‘Yes, exactly... thank you so much.’
Jane put the envelope into her bag as she heard Eddie’s workers arriving. After a brief introduction, the four men finished clearing the carpets and moving the furniture out of the sitting room. Jane asked Eddie what he needed her to do and at first he said that she should just relax and go up to her bedroom to watch some TV. Jane adamantly refused, insisting she needed to help. So she was given instructions to go to a hardware shop, then on to a business associate of Eddie’s who ran a paint shop on Brixton High Street. Eddie had made a methodical list of various-sized paint brushes they needed as well as several scrapers to remove the wallpaper. Then on her return she could begin stripping the wallpaper.
At the shop in Brixton, Jane ordered the paint. She had taken Eddie’s advice and chosen mostly white matt and gloss, as well as some large cans of gloss finish for the floorboards. Ignoring what Eddie had said about food, she stopped at Tesco and bought packets of ham, bread and salad, plus two bottles of milk.
It was just after midday by the time Jane returned home. She was amazed to see how much rubbish had already been accumulated in the skip. She recalled that she had mentioned to Eddie that a lot of her furniture needed replacing, and he had obviously taken her at her word. However, it looked as though a few other people in the neighbourhood had been dumping their unwanted stuff in the skip as well.